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Shobana Jeyasingh, Charlotte Vincent and Wendy Houstoun interviewed by Donald Hutera
'I hope this composite interview approach doesn't mean we're being talked to as The Women.' These cautionary words belong to Wendy Houstoun when informed that she, Charlotte Vincent and Shobana Jeyasingh were all going to have their work for Dance Umbrella 2009 spotlighted. Together. 'I hate being grouped alongside people with whom I have nothing in common except for gender,' Houstoun continued.
The point is well taken. Certainly the last thing Dance Umbrella wants to do is support tokenism of any kind. Still, the temptation is strong - especially in light of recent (May 2009) online debates about the disparity between opportunities for men and women in dance in the UK - to make note of and, indeed, celebrate the intelligence and dedication with which each of these three experienced British artists has been crafting dance-based performances for many years now.
Houstoun and Jeyasingh, both London-based, began making work in the early to mid-1980s. Vincent, who lives in Sheffield, started her choreographic career the following decade. The latter two run their own eponymous companies. Jeyasingh has a reputation for fashioning brainy yet visceral dance pieces with an up-to-the-minute edge, and ones that frequently feature live and/or commissioned music. Vincent's brand of dance theatre combines conceptual playfulness and raw emotion, and often draws upon the personal stories of either herself or a multi-national cast. Houstoun, meanwhile, is an independent artist who has performed with groups like DV8 and Forced Entertainment as well as creating projects and shows of her own that are invariably stamped by an engaging, questioning wit.
The bottom line is, all three make work that matters. So let's bang the drum on their behalf and in the process find out more about who they are, where they've come from and why and how they do what they do, including what they've got planned for DU09.
Realising that it's still early days, what can you say about your upcoming Dance Umbrella performance?
Wendy Houstoun: The piece is called Keep Dancing. It uses text, archive video footage and performance. I'm taking a kind of 'poor theatre' approach in keeping with our financially stricken times. It deals with the idea of inertia and the will to act. It's also about persistence, or some deep down drive that makes us keep going. I'm thinking of it as quite positive and optimistic.
Charlotte Vincent: If We Go On is Vincent Dance Theatre's new middle-scale work for eight performers. Wendy Houstoun is writing texts for the production - some will become scripts, others are formal triggers for action I anticipate that, unlike the company's work to date, the actions of the people onstage will be connected visually, textually, spatially and musically, but not physically. This structure will encourages the audience to fill in the gaps of logic and narrative that I usually try to spell out, leaving space for multiple meanings to emerge about fragmentation, contradiction, exhaustion and restlessness.
Shobana Jeyasingh: Don't ask me what it's about, okay? It's all kind of in the pipeline. I don't even want to say names in case it isn't those names.
Are there overriding ides or elements in the new work that you have perhaps been investigating for a while now?
SJ: Whenever I finish a piece I always leave it with lots of questions. My next piece tends to be about trying to find the answers, and that leaves you with another set of questions. To people who've seen the finished product it probably looks very different, but my concerns have been the same. I'm just answering questions from the piece before.
WH: I have a drive to know how language and movement sit next to each other, and a continuous interest in attending to the audience in a direct way. I also take pleasure in cheap jokes and moments of stupidity. At the same time I want to combine personal observation with a wider social commentary.
CV: I feel a need to explore different strands of theatre. For instance, I'm becoming more interested in dismantling the act of performance whilst being engaged in the act of performing. It's about making explicit the mechanics of theatre rather than buying into the magic and illusion of an out of reach world onstage. You could say I'm interested in the fall rather than the leap. I'm also interested in finding an appropriate language for our times, and for my age and gender. How can I stretch the meaning of choreography by applying its rules and devices to musical, visual and textual forms? And how can I work with text and movement without one form replicating the other?
What are some of the ways you've changed since you started making dance?
WH: Age, of course, is the obvious answer and, along with that, context- the times we're living in and the aesthetic that goes along with it. In 1985 I was making small, unpaid stuff that went round the alternative cabaret scene in London. In 2008 I was doing a lot of small, unpaid stuff in small bars and alternative cabarets in London. My work's been influenced by people and ideas I've met over this period of time. It's gotten more playful, more self-aware theatrically, and language has become more central.
SJ: Making dance is basically about engaging with other human beings. But with choreography, more than any art form, you can't help but be implicated in the flux of life. The bigger change - the scenery and cultural flow around me - has changed incredibly. It's to do with the way Britain has changed, and funding, and the people who audition. Everything I do is influenced by the skills base of the dancers. I need bodies moving in front of me because that's really what makes me think. I've come from a tradition where body and music hold hands. The whole test of the dancer's virtuosity is how well they follow patterns of the music. A bit like the ballet. After a few years I felt I didn't really want to do that any more. I became more and more seduced by the dynamic narrative and musicality of the body. I still wanted music, but I was quite interested in what the relationship between it and the dancing body could be. We're so dramatically programmed to dance to music. For me it's far more interesting to find the phrase that suits the movement, which may or may not arrange itself in the way the composer's arranged the sounds.
How do you think you're perceived in the UK dance/performance scene?
CV: Demanding. Outspoken. Female.
WH: I'm not sure I want to know, really. Often words like maverick, idiosyncratic and quirky are used, which drive me mad as they're patronising, dismissive and don't really engage with the work. I think how I'm perceived would change depending on whom you talk to. Possible answers could be as someone who's persevering, and who's still wrestling with ideas. I'm very conscious - and proud - of how DV8 is still something people refer to a lot. Hmm.. perhaps an ageing dancer who won't go away?
SJ: I've been asked how I feel about the work being considered cerebral. Is that a polite way of saying it's a bit cold? The dances I made in the past were very bharata natyam dances. The dancers didn't find it emotional because I wasn't using the narrative part of the dance, so to them it seemed a mechanical arrangement of bodies. I always found this strange because I find a dancer onstage emotional per se. In the best possible world structure is an emotional experience. But you also need an audience that is empathetic to dance structures. Obviously there can be a difference in expectations. And yet we're all cerebral. We wouldn't be able to exist if we weren't thinking. I enjoy thinking. For me every dance is like a crossword puzzle. All the pieces are there, you just have to find and then put them in the right order.
Is there anything more you'd like to say about women choreographers?
SJ: It's like hacking a path through the jungle, not just in dance but in terms of being a woman and an Asian. But I haven't looked back to see whether anyone's following. Everybody influences everybody else, don't they? Looking at the demographic of dance, there should be hundreds of women choreographers. There are certainly hundred of female dancers. The male dancer is still a bit of a rarity, but when it comes to positions of responsibility it tends to be very male-dominated. It's not like that in writing or the visual arts.
WH: My best response is to continue to make work and attempt to get it programmed so that it's visible. But I'm not, and never have been, interested in the notion that women's work should sit separately.
CV: Understated. Overlooked. Not sexy enough. Not seeking glory but rather grafting away, searching for a meaningful language that isn't based on conventional mastery and virtuosity but perhaps highlights collaboration and shared processes and is somehow more human.
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